If you wonder how much AI companies are trying to control governments, see this, about their influence in the UK

[highplainsdem]

https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-shocking-scale-of-big-tech-influence-labour-peter-kyle-amazon-google-meta

-snip-

Between July and December 2024, ministers held 90 meetings with executives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft. Senior officials at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Cabinet Office met them on 47 more occasions.

-snip-

Just weeks after the general election, Google’s AI chief was invited to “sense check” Labour’s new AI policy, according to documents we obtained.

In another case, technology secretary Peter Kyle said he would “advocate” for Amazon at the UK’s competition regulator—at a time when the regulator was actively investigating the company. That case was later dropped.

Campaigners told us they were “alarmed” at the influence of these ‘Big Five’ tech giants, which each gave $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.

-snip-

Much more at the link, including PDFs of government documents.

This is disgraceful, and I'd expect better of Labour, which should be representing workers including artists, not conspiring with AI companies to try to change laws so AI companies can take whatever intellectual property they want for training data.

Trump is the immediate threat here in the US. But the AI companies also threaten democracy and individual rights. They sided with Trump, thinking he would be on their side more than Harris would, but even if she'd been elected, these companies would be threats. They're apparently having little trouble undermining what should be a liberal party in the UK.

[TommyT139]

1. Thank you

It will be interesting to see how the privacy protections in the UK, and moreso, Europe, hold up against these new technologies.